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2025-08-01 10:06:00| Fast Company

YouTubers dedicate their lives to building a following in hopes of creating and sustaining a livelihood. For top creators, the rewards are immense: MrBeast, the worlds biggest YouTuber, is estimated to be worth $1 billion. Its no surprise, then, that YouTube channels are valuable assets, often bought and sold for significant sums. A new study published in the Cornell University archive arXiv reveals that 1 in every 400 YouTube channels has changed hands on third-party platforms, frequently undergoing complete transformations in the process. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University analyzed Fameswapa kind of eBay for social media profilescataloging 4,641 YouTube channels with a combined 823 million subscribers listed for sale between October 2024 and March 2025. They then tracked which of those channels sold, confirming more than $1 million in transactions during that six-month period. It was really remarkable, says Alejandro Cuevas, the papers lead author. A YouTube spokesperson said that selling accounts violates the platforms Terms of Service, and the company will take action if such activity is detected. “If we detect that bad actors are creating channels with the intent to scam, mislead, spam, or defraud other users, we terminate those channels, the spokesperson tells Fast Company. Given the high prices paid, new owners are eager to see a return on their investment. About one in four of the tracked channelsrepresenting a combined 220 million followerswere completely overhauled within 30 days, with changes to their handle, title, and description that erased any connection to the original identity. The researchers found that these revamped channels continued to gain subscribers over the following 12 weeks, suggesting most viewers didnt notice the switch. However, many new owners werent focused on producing quality content: 37% of repurposed channels later promoted material flagged by YouTube as potentially harmfulespecially political disinformation, crypto schemes, and gambling ads. A follow-up analysis by the same researchers of 1.4 million randomly selected channels from analytics platform Social Blade revealed that around 0.25% showed similar patterns of transformation. The growing trade in YouTube channels reflects broader shifts in how we consume content, says Manoel Horta Ribeiro, a coauthor on the study. Part of the reason why this is so prevalent right now is because systematically, in these platforms, weve seen a decrease in the agency over what we consume, he says. Knowing that a channel already has an audience and a veneer of credibility makes it easier to push new content into users feeds. The shortform content paradigm facilitates this a lot, because in the past, you would search for channels directly, maybe by name, or be more aware of that, says Cuevas. This just makes it more fertile ground for these type of thing.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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2025-08-01 10:00:00| Fast Company

If you sit on the terraced steps at the newly-rebuilt Wagner Park on the Manhattan waterfront, looking out at the Statue of Liberty, you probably wont know that theres an 18-foot-tall flood wall hidden under your feet. The small park, which just opened after an 18-month renovation, is one piece of a larger, $1.7 billion system of flood protection being installed in New York City. Most of the park now sits around 10 feet higher than it did in the past, with the hidden wall high enough to hold back water in a storm surge. Under the central lawn, a 63,000-gallon stormwater cistern holds rain in heavy storms, then recycles the water to irrigate the park. On the other side of the wall, near the Hudson River, rain flows through gardens and into an infiltration system that releases it slowly to help avoid floods. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] You can engineer these solutions with large floodwalls everywhere, says Raju Mann, president and CEO of Battery Park City Authority, the public benefit corporation that manages urban planning in the area. But here, we took a more careful approach. How do we have a great open space that also has flood protection in itnot how do we just build a flood protection project? [Image: BPCA] From the beginning, the design team knew that they wanted to avoid exposing the floodwall as much as possible. In a few spots in the park, tunnels underground meant that it wasnt possible to go down to the bedrock, and the wall is exposed. But most of it is completely hidden. In other parts of the park, flood gates integrated into pathways can pop up in an emergency, but otherwise arent noticeable. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] Its a beautiful waterfront, says Gonzalo Cruz, vice president and principal for landscape architecture and urban design at AECOM, the engineering firm that worked on the design. We want people to feel very connected to its experience and how to navigate the park, he says. “Back in the day, when mechanisms for flood protection were put into place, they were erected without any consideration for how people use these spaces. Were rethinking the way we think about open space and how we design around infrastructure. The redesigned park feels larger than it previously did, Mann says, with more outdoor rooms and space for concerts and other performances. It will also have a new energy-efficient pavilion with community space where nonprofits can have classes, and a rooftop terrace. Gardens through the park are designed with native plants. The paving materials were chosen to help reduce the urban heat island effect. The solar-powered lighting in the park is DarkSky compliant to reduce the impact of light pollution on wildlife. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] The plan for the transformation started more than a decade ago, after Hurricane Sandy devastated lower Manhattan. The storm surge reached 13 feet at Battery Park, at the southern tip of the island. Streets and subway tunnels were flooded. The power went out for days. Some offices closed for weeks. A hospital had to evacuate patients. Two residents drowned in a basement apartment in the East Village. Wagner Park sits next to the Battery, but at a higher elevation. It avoided flooding during Sandy. But its in the 100-year flood plain. The city recognized that major storms are becoming more likely because of climate changeboth storm surges and heavy rain. And it knew that the park needed to be better protected. The new design is based on flood levels that are possible in the 2050s as the sea level rises. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] The floodwall will connect to other projects to the north and south. Collectively, the new infrastructure will help make it less likely that the surrounding neighborhoods flood. Thats especially important now, Mann says, as the federal government is pulling back from climate action. As we’re getting less serious as a country about managing our greenhouse gas emission, then we need to get more serious about how we actually adapt to a change in climate, he says. I think it’s going to put more and more pressure on places to think about how do we actually grapple with the reality that increasingly looks like. And with some optimism, meaning, can we actually design better places? I think that this project, and other projects getting delivered now, provides some optimism that climate change adaptation doesn’t need to be just taking your medicine. It can actually be better space.


Category: E-Commerce

 

2025-08-01 10:00:00| Fast Company

For the first time since its founding in 1943, Ikea is making it possible to shop for a piece of its furniture in a store other than its own.  Historically, Ikea has run a solely direct-to-consumer business model, selling its wares exclusively through its iconic big blue box stores and via its website. Now, though, the company is breaking that mold through a new partnership with Best Buy. Beginning in fall 2025, small Ikea kiosks will begin popping up in Best Buy stores in Florida and Texas, combining Ikeas signature room-specific furnishings with Best Buys range of home appliances.  The move represents another step in Ikeas yearslong plan to diversify and expand its retail footprint. In 2025, that looks like finding new ways to appear in physical storefronts without the investment required for a typical 300,000-square-foot Ikea behemoth. [Image: Ikea] A one-stop shop for your dream kitchen According to the company, Ikeas cross-brand retail experience will launch in 10 stores throughout Florida and Texas. Each will feature 1,000-square-foot Ikea storefronts that showcase inspirational kitchen and laundry room settings, including embedded Best Buy appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves and washers and dryers. Both Ikea representatives and Best Buy employees will be available to help customers plan their spaces and order the items on display. The Ikea display items will not be warehoused at the Best Buy sites, but customers can place orders through the Ikea representatives for shipping and in-home delivery. In a press release, Ikea shared that the goal of the collaboration is to create a one-stop destination for customers to design their dream kitchen, storage area, or laundry space. The Ikea growth strategy in the U.S. is to create a more accessible, easy, and convenient shopping experience for many people, says Rob Olson, chief operating officer for Ikea U.S. Physical expansion takes time, and by partnering with Best Buy, we can enter markets sooner, introducing new customer meeting points at a faster pace. It also allows us to penetrate existing markets in a much deeper way, as we can open shop-in-shops focused on how consumers like to shop, [putting] Ikea closer to where they live in the process. Ikea’s retail experiments Since 2018, Ikea has experimented with a series of small-format stores that deliver a pared-down version of the brands physical retail experience. These plan-and-order points with pickup typically include a small storefront with a few popular Ikea items and a team of staffers dedicated to helping customers plan and order furnishings for big design projects. According to Olson, Ikea had opened 10 such locations by the end of fiscal year 2024, and its already cut the ribbon on six additional locations in 2025; more will debut before the end of the year. In an interview with RetailSpaces last year, Olson referred to these new-format stores as an avenue for the brand to literally get closer to its consumers, considering that Ikea’s large locations often require fans to travel out of their way to browse in-person. By opening shops-in-a-shop through Best Buy, it looks like Ikea is pursuing another opportunity to show up where its customers already are.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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